this is kind of a late post for this activity we did in class, but it might have been about a week or so ago since we did this exercise. i actually found this exercise very useful because it was actually pretty hard to figure out what was going on through my mind while trying to actually read and understand the text. i already have a hard time understanding what i read and get pretty frustrated because at times, i have to reread sentences or sometimes even paragraphs multiple times to acutally know what it is trying to say. i think this exercise helped me because we could read out loud, which is actually sometimes easier to understand what i just read, and we got to express our thoughts freely to our critical friend (shirlyn =]). i thought it was also useful in that we got to hear what our partner was saying too! i liked how we got to respond and even get responses from our “thinking out loud”. it was a fun exercise too.

i was actually really interested when we learned about propaganda the other day, in class. i found it really informational and very interesting since i never knew there are that many different types of propaganda techiniques! i was so shocked. i did not know that fear could be used as a technique, but come to think of it, it does seem like a very effective way to get people to buy their product or follow their ways. advertisements use fear to get people to buy what they are selling, for instance, diet products. they say something like, “if you use this, you won’t be fat!” this can be very convincing to people, especially those who are self-conscious about their weight. i guess you can say that propaganda is a part of our everyday lives. it is in the commericials we watch when we’re watching tv, in the foods we eat, bodily products we use, and even in the water we drink! i just heard a radio commericial this morning which advertised “crystal gyser” water. they said that their bottled water is the only bottled water that is taken straight from the gysers. all the other bottled waters are from tap! i can’t believe they would ‘bash’ other companies! i guess that’s just another way to get their point across – another propaganda technique?

today, in class, if you dont remember, we discussed literacy and what it means to us. i think literacy is as many people said, being able to read and write. it is also being able to understand it and analyze the meaning of it. i also agree that there are different levels of it. there is jsut simply being able to read. there is being able to take it a little further and retaining and comprehending what was just read. there is also analyzing it in a way where it makes an effect on you and giving you a deeper meaning to the text. i also though that literacy can get people places. for instance, in an office, you need to be literate, especially in that profession, otherwise, you wouldnt knwo what youre doing and they would not hire you! there are also requirements for joining/playing sports. you need to have at least a 2.0 to be on a team, otherwise you wouldnt be able to be on the team! =( they would not want to be the reason why you did not do good in school, therefore you have to be literate enough in school to play your favorite sports. as i remember ashley saying, “knowledge is power”. i believe it can help you reach your goals.

so, it kind of annoyed me that margaret atwood did not use quotes. i found it a little hard to read and understand because i was not sure if she was speaking to the person or thinking it. it dawned on me though, that she did this because maybe she wanted to show that offred was actually thinking of what she was trying to say. sometimes people do not actually think before they act or speak, and i think atwood was trying to make it a point of showing that without the quotes, offred is actually thinking of what to say and what not to. i feel as if their language and literacy is very restricted. if they say something out of line, they would get in trouble and be punished. i noticed that the only things in quotes are the words that other people are saying because it is not what she is thinking, but what she is comprehending what is being said to her. i also noticed that the words taht are italicized are the words or phrases that offred is reflecting on and is actually trying to make sense of what this word/phrase means to her. although atwood does not use quotes in most of the dialogues, i find it interesting because she is trying to prove a point that im not so sure about, but im pretty sure that it has to do with the fact that any form of communication is restricted. =)

“We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?”

i really like this quote because it says a lot about people’s naiveness. people are so unaware about what they have in life. this goes along with the saying, “you dont know what you have until its gone.” i definately agree with this saying because she doesnt appreciate all the wonderful, random things in life until she loses it. we never appreciate all the little things in life, for instance, the paintings hung inside our hotel room, or the bible that is placed in the nightstand drawer. how could anyone know that the things that they ignore, or push to the side, will never be available to them again? how could she know that her life would change and all she has in her room was a bed, a nightstand, and a window? how could anyone be happy in this world? the only way to learn that she was happy is to lose it and have the miserable life she has now.

“Take my life but don’t take away the meaning of my life.”

this quote really made me think. in my opinion, she was trying to say that she does not care about not having the gift of life. no matter if she is dead or alive, she does not mind, just as long as the life that she has lived has meaning. for example, if someone was once living in grave poverty, but miraculously won the lottery, he/she would believe his/her reason for living is to give back to the needy. he/she would feel as if the reason why he/she became so wealthy was to donate the money to shelter, feed, and clothe the homeless, just as mother theresa. the person’s hope for living and giving would also give hope  to the needy people to keep on living. if this person dies, he/she has made an impact on the lives of others by giving them hope for living, and therefore has no other purpose in life because he/she believes he/she has already fulfilled his/her reason for living. the woman in the story is saying that she does not care if she does not physically remain on earth, just as long as her life still has meaning and purpose, where her soul still lives on.

i dont think le guins full intention of writing this story was to prove the inequality of gender. although she chose to make up people with no specific gender, i dont think this necessarily means she wanted to send her feminist message out.  i dont think she really is a feminist because she does choose to write about a non permanent gender. being both genders  make the people in this story equal. i think she just made that one of her examples of the many differences in our world and i think she just wanted to prove a point, saying that women and men are equal no matter what, including their personalities. she still calls them “he” because thats the general pronoun that everyone uses. overall, i think her point in writing “the left hand of darkness” is to show the contrasting objects or personalities in the world which balance out each other, as does the ying and yang. just because she uses one example of equality between men and women, does not mean she is a feminist.

today, i remember discussing about the ying and yang, and what it all meant. i think it was very interesting how le guin used the title the left hand of darkness, because she is referring to light. i think she is trying to say that, for there to even be light, there needs to be darkness, and vise versa, as with every other opposite there is in this world. for example, there is big and small, fat and skinny, happy and sad, extrovert and introvert, boring and entertaining, and even something as simple as good and bad. i think she wrote this story to send a message saying that there is always two sides to everything. without its opposite, how are you supposed to know what it is?? how would you know what good is, if there is no bad? is there such thing as being happy if no one in the world is sad? there needs to be something to contrast it, in order for someone to know its actual meaning.

“My trust in Estraven had been more willed than spontaneous; now i believed him completely.” p. 210

As we discussed in class, is Genly really changing his perception of Estraven? i think genly is genuinly changing his view of Estraven. At first, he was very suspicious of him and his actions. Estraven seemed to always hide something. this made genly doubt his actions and made his very skeptical of estraven. i think genly is considering estraven as a friend because, why wouldn’t you trust someone after they saved your life? estraven helped genly escape from prison, and he also is caring for him on the journey back to Karhide. although estraven seems like a typical politician, who is very deceitful, he uses one of those ‘suspicious’ qualities, or ‘skills’, such as stealing food, for their survival. just because he may seem suspicious and very mistrusting, he seems to have his heart in the right place when it comes to the things he does. i think genly will come to conclusion that estraven really isn’t that bad, and he might give him a chance to be his friend, provided that he says he already trusts him completely.

i’m not really sure what the word meshe means. maybe meshe is a symbol of something or someone that witnesses everything and that “nothing is unseen”. maybe meshe is god?, who sees everything that is going on. what i dont get is why le guin mentioned a tree in chapter 12.

she says, “a hemmen-tree… lies a hundred miles long and a hundred miles wide… with a hundred branches and on every branch a thousand twigs and on every twig a hundred leaves… ‘all my leaves are seen, but one, this one int he darkness cast be all the others. this one leaf i keep secret to myself. who will see it..?’ ” maybe the tree is the meshe, or the thing that sees everything because trees last a very long time. i wonder why she uses the number 100 many times in this quote, until she talks about the branches. maybe the branches she refers to are the many countries in the world, and the twigs are the many different people in those countries. maybe the leaves refer to the many different things a person can do, but the one leaf that can’t be seen, the darkness if the one ‘secret’ action or characteristic of the person that they don’t want anyone else to see, and the only ones that can see that one ‘dark leaf’ is themself, the meshe, or the one that can see everything. thats how i see it.